Opera 10.60 ships, faster than fastest?

[Antony]

Opera Software has introduced Opera 10.60, claiming its new browser is the fastest around and up to 50 percent faster than the previous version. (They also claim the previous version was the fastest browser on Earth.)

The browser employs up-to-date open standards, adds new features, improved security and is more stable than before.

Speed is the key claim: The company suggests its speed enhancements translate into a faster browsing experience for users on modern JavaScript-heavy sites such as Gmail and Facebook.

Geolocation is one of the built-in features, so your current position can be set on the map when using maps, though you can switch this feature off.



Opera is also first to market in fielding the open WebM format that gives you optimized video right in the browser on all platforms. Support for offline applications also appears in this release.

The Opera Turbo compresses the data going over your connection up to a factor of two or more, for those congested connections at cafés or a mobile connection at the summerhouse.

Opera 10.60 is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux, and it is available free of charge. Opera 10.60 browser can be downloaded from Opera website.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.2.6) Gecko/20100625 Firefox/3.6.6

[iJohnE]

Downloading the update now. We'll see how it is afterwards.

UserAgent: Opera/9.80 (Windows NT 6.0; U; en) Presto/2.5.24 Version/10.54

[James]

I used to be an Opera user (from way back when I had to pay for it). Nowadays... I'm content with Firefox. It certainly sounds interesting, Antony, but one thing would hold me back right away... it does not support LastPass and without that little gem I'm not interested.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.6) Gecko/20100625 Firefox/3.6.6

[aleksod]

I used to be an Opera user (from way back when I had to pay for it). Nowadays... I'm content with Firefox. It certainly sounds interesting, Antony, but one thing would hold me back right away... it does not support LastPass and without that little gem I'm not interested.

Yup, same story here - LastPass is the only extension I need and unless a browser supports it completely, I'd rather use Firefox/Chrome (currently on Firefox and happy). The claims on speed are probably true, but there comes a moment where it becomes less and less important, especially with today's trendy focus on JavaScript performance among browser developers and overabundance of Wi-Fi signals

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.6) Gecko/20100625 Firefox/3.6.6 ( .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET4.0C)

[James]

I used to be an Opera user (from way back when I had to pay for it). Nowadays... I'm content with Firefox. It certainly sounds interesting, Antony, but one thing would hold me back right away... it does not support LastPass and without that little gem I'm not interested.

Yup, same story here - LastPass is the only extension I need and unless a browser supports it completely, I'd rather use Firefox/Chrome (currently on Firefox and happy). The claims on speed are probably true, but there comes a moment where it becomes less and less important, especially with today's trendy focus on JavaScript performance among browser developers and overabundance of Wi-Fi signals

Good points. And in truth... the difference in rendering speed is negligible. Fast is fast and they're all reasonably fast these days. What concerns me much more is security and passwords that can easily be hacked are a major issue. LastPass is simply an incredible extension that works with most major browsers except Opera. All of my passwords are different and all are strong. There is no way under the sun I could remember them nor change them periodically in a reasonable fashion without a password manager like LastPass. So... Opera will have to remain on the sidelines as far as I'm concerned. And the workaround to make it function with Opera is too convoluted.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.6) Gecko/20100625 Firefox/3.6.6

[Anonymosity]

This new version crashes for me whenever I try to use Dragonfly. No huge loss, since I did not find Dragonfly very useful, but the previous version worked without crashing.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; rv:1.9.2.6) Gecko Firefox/3.6.6